


Eyes Wide Like The Ocean

by blanchtt



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 13:28:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8447704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: All she wanted was a place to herself, a location forgotten off any sort of map, to be alone and work and study the lifecycle of pagophilus groenlandicus. She finds exactly what she's looking for far, far to the north, in a tiny shack at the edge of the permafrost that faces a steel-grey ocean, the occasional bits of iceberg, and dark clouds.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Check out [this awesome poster](http://marite-82.tumblr.com/post/152781214323/eyes-wide-like-the-oceans-by) that @maritexxa1982 made for this fic! Thank you so much <3

 

 

 

All she wanted was a place to herself, a location forgotten off any sort of map, to be alone and work and study the lifecycle of _pagophilus groenlandicus_. She finds exactly what she's looking for far, far to the north, in a tiny shack at the edge of the permafrost that faces a steel-grey ocean, the occasional bits of iceberg, and dark clouds. The nearest village is an hour by snowmobile, her only contact a radio phone.

 

“Sarah?” Delphine sputters. She sits on hard-packed snow, practically ice, dampness beginning to soak through her thick corduroy pants and shivering in her thin sweater. It is Sarah, isn't it? Delphine shivers, keeps her eyes above shoulder level out of courtesy and rubs her bare hands together. She hadn’t planned on wandering outside at all today, but the squeal of something had lured her out, a flare ready, and lo and behold, there was another one.

 

It’s just her luck, of course, to have a gun and flares that keep the polar bears away. And what keeps polar bears away means it’s also her luck to be visited by not just one selkie - because there is no other scientific explanation for the woman, is there? - but two.

 

The woman sits on the ice just a meter away from a breathing hole in the ice, naked and dripping water and looking totally unaffected by any of it. 

 

“Easy mistake to make, but no,” the selkie-woman says, reaching up to wring water from her intricate braids. She does so, careful not to splash, and then grins, holding out a dripping hand that Delphine takes lightly, almost gasping at the coldness. “I’m Cosima. And, well, not to intrude” - she asks, tilting her head to the side, contrite and confident at the same time - “but would you mind if I came inside?”

 

 

-

 

 

Cosima is apparently fascinated by her. 

 

“Sarah’s met a human before,” Cosima offers. Delphine pours herself a cup of coffee - her supply is getting low and she should probably ration it a bit, given how expensive it is, but it feels like today is one of those days where she’ll need it. She’s let Cosima into her tiny shack, and Cosima has been here for the past three hours, the two of them speaking. “That’s how she got Kira.”

 

Delphine pulls the chair out and sits at her tiny desk, the only other spare seat in the cramped room given that Cosima occupies her bed, curled up in the blankets. She takes a sip, wracks her memory, and comes up with nothing. “And Kira is?” 

 

“Her daughter,” Cosima explains cheerfully.

 

“Ah.” 

 

Sarah hadn’t mentioned that. Delphine can hardly imagine a child up in this sort of territory, with weather, with shifting ice, with bears. Even the locals keep their children close because of those. Delphine frowns into her coffee, wonders how much Sarah’s been leaving out and why Cosima, her sister, is so eager to speak with her. 

 

Delphine glances at Cosima, finds the woman watching her with a smile, and can’t help but laugh. Whatever the reason, she doesn’t mind the company. Delphine sets her coffee down on the table, picks up her notebook and uncaps her pen.

 

“Do you mind?”

 

Cosima shakes her head, and Delphine looks down, begins writing. 

 

Cosima offers a fascinating perspective on the north, the animals, the people, the melting ice, the dark water underneath. There’s no way any of this will ever be published, given that Delphine herself wouldn’t have believed it had she not met the two of them personally. But it feels like a disservice to posterity not to write it down.

 

After what is surely hours more but feels like only a few minutes, Delphine stops writing, clenches and unclenches her hands to ease the cramp. Still Cosima occupies her bed, though now she lies comfortably on her side, twisted up in the blanket and head propped on her arm as Delphine turns on the kerosene lamp as the summer’s daylight starts to fade, as the shack grows darker. 

 

“Are you sure you don’t want something to wear?” Delphine asks once more. It’s not as if she doesn’t appreciate the female form, but surely Cosima must be cold. But Cosima only looks at her blankly, raises and then drops a bared shoulder in a very familiar motion.

 

“Should I?”

 

Delphine shakes her head in amusement as she gets up, reaches for her box of supplies and roots around inside for a tin of canned something for dinner. It won’t be a five-course meal, but she can offer Cosima… biscuits, and SPAM, apparently. “Well, if you’re cold,” Delphine offers, looking back over her shoulder.

 

Cosima only clutches the blanket around herself tighter, grinning. “I don’t get cold, but I like this blanket.”

 

“Then keep it,” Delphine offers, reaching for a can opener. 

 

 

-

 

 

Cosima makes no motion to leave and Delphine finds the proposition agreeable. They stay up late, and the next morning Delphine wakes up to find that she’s nodded off at her desk. She sits up, stretches her back and massages a crick in her neck. It’s hardly a position to sleep in, but she can hardly kick Cosima out of her bed, can she?

 

Once the other woman wakes, they part, and Cosima shifts and slips back down a breathing hole, disappearing in a flash of sleek-dark fur. Delphine heads back to her shack, the home overwhelmingly quiet as she shuts the door behind herself, locks it, and fixes herself breakfast. 

 

The whole thing feels like a dream, except that she’s got a notebook full of handwritten notes and a rumpled blanket that lies on her unmade bed.

 

(She always, always, _always_ makes her bed, and the blanket smells like salt, like ice, like a woman).

 

 

-

 

 

She would dismiss the rattling of her door for the wind or perhaps a polar bear come to finish her off, but it’s accompanied by a cheerful, “Delphine!”, and so Delphine opens it. 

 

Because they are going out on the ice she insists Cosima cover up, which involves getting her into the few spare things Delphine’s brought along that’ll fit her. The sight ends up being of a petite woman swimming in Delphine’s extra winter clothes, braids pulled back in a whorling spiral at the nape of her neck. Delphine brings her gun with her as they head out, as she always does, and lets Cosima lead the way. 

 

This far north, there’s not much in the way of sightseeing. Instead, Cosima points out things that Delphine knows others, locals, would know. And, of course, seals. Cracks in the ice that open up right before them. The mirror of clouds far off on the horizon, a dangerous mirage. Tiny tracks of Arctic foxes. 

 

They’ve been walking for a good hour, Delphine checking her compass occasionally to keep a due north track, when Cosima stops, reaches out, and grabs her forearm excitedly.

 

“Look.”

 

“ _Mon Dieu_ ,” Delphine agrees. “They’re not swimming away.”

 

Cosima sits down abruptly, grinning, and Delphine follows - just a few feet away a dark-mottled seal lies out on the ice near a breathing hole, basking, a white pup lying next to her. “It’s Sarah and Kira,” Cosima explains, and it makes sense now how they’ve gotten so exceptionally close without being spotted or scented. Delphine knows from experience how difficult it is to approach a mother and pup. The pups by themselves, unfortunately, are _too_ easy to approach.

 

“Can I?” Delphine asks, motioning forward, and Cosima nods.

 

“I asked already. Leave the gun, though.”

 

And so Delphine sets the gun down on the ice, walks over and slows and then, a few feet away, moves to lie on her stomach.

 

To the untrained eye it’s easy to mistake them for common _pagophilus groenlandicus_ , but the closer she gets, the easier it is to reconcile the sight of the dark seal with the moody woman she’s met before. Sarah appears to sleep through her entire approach, although Delphine’s certain she’s keeping watch through one half-lidded eyes, keeping watch as whiskers twitch.

 

With her mother’s apparent ease, Kira crawls close, snuffling, dragging herself forward on ice, and Delphine bites her lip, a childish excitement bubbling up at the sight. She’s a giant ball of white fur, complete with a little black muzzle and dark eyes, and this is quickly becoming the height of her research career.

 

Delphine reaches out, scratches under Kira’s chin, and watches big dark eyes close in pleasure. “She’s beautiful,” she breathes, an olive branch to Sarah that appears to go ignored. 

 

Cosima comes and walks over and settles at her side, and Kira instantly loses interest in scratches, squeaks and crawls over and climbs into Cosima’s familiar lap to Delphine's amusement.

 

(Cosima makes a face at the weight of her, tells Kira she’s getting big enough to shift soon, and Delphine wonders if it’s a ridiculous sense of anthropomorphism or something more human as Sarah snorts and turns over, back to them both.)

 

 

-

 

 

She’s become used to Cosima’s visits, and her absence over the span of several days worries Delphine immensely. 

 

Cosima’s no seal, not a real one, but that doesn’t mean she can’t succumb to any of the pitfalls a seal could. Delphine knows her own limits up here, though, and even in good weather is averse to walking too far away from her shack without a guide or radio contact. 

 

And so she sits in useless worry, waiting for Cosima to return.

 

 

-

 

 

Her door rattles in the middle of the night, waking her from restless sleep. 

 

Delphine slips out of bed, tugs her shirt down to a modest height, and peers out the tiny window. It’s useless, a remnant of a gesture from down south - it’s pitch black outside just as it is inside. Instead, she waits, breath baited, but hears no low growl of a polar bear, the heavy sound of paws on ice. She turns on her lamp, reaches for the door, opens it a crack, and then flings it open. It’s perhaps too forward considering how long they’ve known each other, but she reaches out, grabs Cosima in a hug, holds her close even though, as usual, Cosima is still damp from the water. 

 

“ _Cosima_ ,” she breathes, and finds the name fits on her tongue like home does. She takes a step back, hands on Cosima’s shoulders. She doesn’t ask where Cosima’s been, because there is nothing, really, that ties Cosima here except Delphine’s own need for her company. “I was so worried.” 

 

Cosima wriggles out of her grasp, grins, and sidles around her, heading inside, and Delphine follows, shuts the door behind them both. “Sarah said I shouldn’t speak to you,” Cosima admits in apparent amusement, looking around the now-familiar shack before choosing once again to settle in Delphine’s bed. Cosima grabs the blanket, pulls it over herself, and settles with a look of contentment on her face. 

 

Like the first and only time her foot had ever punched through snow and touched Arctic water, it's almost enough to stop her heart. It’s hardly news, but it is crushing. Everyone knows blood’s thicker than water. Delphine swallows thickly, and can think of nothing more to say other than, “Did she?”

 

The disappointment must be clear, because Cosima cocks her head, suddenly serious. “Yes,” she says. “Or see you.”

 

And Delphine understands what this is, then. A goodbye. But Cosima shifts, and the blanket slips, and Delphine find herself helpless not to stare, at the paleness of her skin, at the sweep of dark braids against her shoulder, at the curve of a breast. 

 

“But she’s got Cal,” Cosima says, softly, and in that is something like loneliness, like want, like hope. “Men come along all the time up here. It’s rarer to find a woman.”

 

The statement hits her like a ton of bricks, and Cosima’s expression, the way she looks up at her through her lashes, the way she bites her lip, tells Delphine all she needs to know.

 

She’s never been one to leap without thinking, to move forward without a plan - deadly, up here - but Cosima offers, amused, “You don’t have to sleep over there, you know,” and Delphine does have to agree that her bed is a much more palatable alternative, especially with Cosima in it, than sleeping another night curled at her desk.

 

 

-

 

 

Cosima had said she never grew cold, and Delphine had believed her, in a way, half-accepting and half-not. Scientifically, it wasn’t possible. The human body could hardly cope below thirty-five degrees, and at twenty-eight there was little hope of resuscitation. 

 

But it is true that Cosima never grows cold, because she is warm, warm, _warm_ , and Delphine, who living down south had fancied herself impermeable to cold, finds herself trembling at her touch, the lave of her tongue, and arching wanton toward her warmth.

 

 

-

 

 

“Your sister will hate me.”

 

Delphine can understand why Sarah would. Hadn’t she felt the same way when her mother had remarried all those years ago? They’ve come to no conclusion over the past few days other than they crave each other’s touch. But it could happen, as it always could, that that could lead to more. And Cosima doesn’t negate the statement, but she does turn to look at her from where she stands in front of the tiny stove, watching over a pot of bubbling stew. 

 

“Sarah’s spent her fair share of time in human form,” Cosima begins. And that is a revelation, because other than the one time Delphine had caught her at her breathing hole, she’s hardly seen Sarah in human form. It makes her wonders who Cal is, and how long Sarah’s known him, and why she’d shifted for him and then left to raise her daughter on her own. “But she’s wild at heart.” Cosima takes the spoon from off the stove, stirs, and finally ends with, “She doesn’t understand.”

 

Delphine nods because even knowing so little about her, she can easily see the differences between Cosima and Sarah. Cosima paces, turns off the burner, and walks over, settling next to her, and Delphine watches as Cosima watches her.

 

“Would you have me leave?” Cosima asks sincerely.

 

And Delphine watches her, her shirt on Cosima looking oversized and baring a shoulder as she raises it, questioning. There will be a time, and likely soon, where she’ll have to finish her research, go back down to Toronto, complete her studies, get a job, publish or perish. But that day is not today.

 

“No,” Delphine decides, and she reaches out, cradles the curve of Cosima’s jaw in her palm, and smiles before kissing her, feels Cosima mirror her in response and, playful, nip at her lip, because seriousness is not a look that suites either of them. 

 

 

-

 

 

The lure of the north is strong. 

 

She understands, now, the inexplicable hold it had on Cabot, on Frobisher, on Amundsen. The crackling ice, the choppy swells, the bitter winds, the boundless horizon, the solitude. It’s too easy to leave the machinations of the world behind, to turn off her radio and focus on completing her thesis, to venture out and learn the lay of the land during daylight, and to enjoy whiling away long, dark winter nights with Cosima.

 

 

 

 


End file.
